Poem Rocket emerged from the East Village/Brooklyn L-Train axis to win critical acclaim and indie underground admiration from the early 90s into the mid 00s, touring regionally, nationally, and internationally. With dark, conceptually-animated post-punk aggressiveness as much as wildly intelligent atypical melodic songwriting, Poem Rocket’s genetic helix of noise, art rock, caffeinated psych, and experimental pop was seen and heard on small-club stages across the US, playing with bands such as Lungfish, Candy Machine, Purple Ivy Shadows, Wharton Tiers Ensemble, Mecca Normal, Majesty Crush, Bowery Electric, Ladybug Transistor, The Church, Bardo Pond, Bride Of No-No, Sweep the Leg Johnny, Royal Trux, Chrome Cranks, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Seely, Bob, Pineal Ventana, Trans Am, Scrawl, Versus, Antietam, and many more.
Art. Noise. Psych. Pop. What in the name of the cosmos is going on here?
Formed in NYC c. 1992, Poem Rocket was unsung yet critically adored with releases on indie labels like Bear, PCP, Magic Eye, Carcrashh, and Chicago’s avant jazz and rock label Atavistic. Somewhere in the 00s, band members fragmented into overlapping amniotic dimensions of poetry, visual poetry, film, and other approaches to media and performance. But now, reconvening around a “lost” EP on Silver Girl Records, Poem Rocket is gathering the dark matter hanging from massive filaments stretching across the universe. The aim? To stitch the wormholes from other peripheral universes together, to reconcile the future of fate and desire, to boldly transgress the formal stochastic limits of noise-rock, psych-rock, art-rock, and experimentation with semantic umph and spiritualist transcendence. Holy fuck, that’s a tall order.
Poem Rocket live
“[Michael] Peters, a Northeast Ohio native who was eventually drawn to NYC, could very well be the best performer/vocalist around that nobody knows about (A handful of MOO readers may remember his band Day For Night kicking around Ohio in the late 80s before heading off to Richmond, Virginia.) …The whole shebang could have been written by Angelo Badalamenti after a Galaxie 500 show. Poem Rocket doesn’t so much create songs as paint sonic pictures ... Start collecting for your walls now.”
—MIKE SUMSER, MOO MAGAZINE
“… More than any other aspect of the band, Poem Rocket’s live performance is what sets them apart from their peers. While most bands will sit idly by when a crowd is unresponsive, Poem Rocket transcends the stage and incites the crowd at any cost. Peters’ confrontational journeys into the crowd are a metaphor for this phenomenon, but it is Poem Rocket's powerful music, honesty and overall intensity that really jumps off the stage into the audience's minds.”
—JAMES WALLIS, THE DAILY ATHENAEUM
Poem Rocket’s live performances often begin with softer acoustic songs performed without microphones at the edge of the stage or in the audience, only to increase in volume and emotional intensity. These wild performances are periodically characterized by strange happenings brought on by the ritualistic breakdown of the stage-audience barrier. On certain occasions, band members disappeared from the stage and strange lights would suddenly come on—or inexplicably go out.
Recordings
… in a genre-obsessed culture drained of difference by algorithms of sameness, it almost makes sense—almost!—that Poem Rocket is still so unsung. The evidence? Upon the release of 2007′s Invasion!, a New York City DJ on WFMU’s airwaves reportedly said, “These guys [Poem Rocket] would have been big in another universe.” Have not older Poem Rocket recordings been detected on places like Last.fm while more recent recordings have infiltrated the usual DSP suspects? Note too that according to the latest in spectroscopy and cosmology, this universe—the one you're reading this bio in—is still expanding. So holy fucking Hugh Everett! Via the potential of expansion and congruence, that WFMU DJ’s alleged "would-have-been” other “universe" is already interpenetrating this one. Astrophysical instruments of measure have already detected the cosmic merger in locales adjacent to where you are right now.
Press
Press (2024-present)
View an archival press kit from Poem Rocket’s first epoch (c. 1994-2007).
Includes Pitchfork, Melody Maker (“Single of the Week” & more), Magnet, Alternative Press (Top 50 Albums of 2000 & more), The Wire, CMJ (“Jackpot!” 2x & more), LA Weekly, Chicago Reader (“Critics Choice”), Atlanta Press, Tape Op, and All Music Guide, as well as Bands Not In The Trouser Press Guide Guide … and much more!
Read more Poem Rocket press.
Archival Press
Press Highlights
Released in 2000, Poem Rocket's psychogeography was a revelation to those who heard it—an interior travelogue twisting the band's rich, dramatic vocal style with the musicality of White Album-era Beatles, the drone of Joy Division and a love for classic concept albums and Morricone soundtracks.
— The Big Take-Over
This five-track EP starts with the epic "Blue Chevy Impala," a song about flying saucers and fickle girlfriends that sounds like a very grumpy Luna, and then gets strange and very beautiful very quickly ... In an ideal world, Cypress Hill would sample "The Furry Evil Bird" and we'd have the real-deal avant-garde head-fuck pile-up we all want ... And I was told America was dead ..?
— Melody Maker
Poem Rocket, in splitting their attentions between little details and enormous designs, practice a kind of musical botany. Imagine songs as tall as tress, with even the tiniest green pores—upon the smallest leaf which dangles from the most remote branch—elaborately, graphically planned. As any great artists, they are trying to do the work of the gods.
— Alternative Press
Inquire
Poem Rocket’s return to live performance features a line-up that includes founders and long-time collaborators Michael Peters and Sandra Gardner (husband and wife), as well as mainstay drummer Peter Gordon and guitarist Mike Knowlton (Unlettered), both childhood friends and members of Gapeseed (also on Silver Girl).
Poem Rocket’s plans for the future include new recordings and a handful of live performances in 2025. For booking requests, please reach out below.